A 10 week supportive arts program was conducted in Jinja, Uganda via the collaboration between a local nongovernmental organization, a Ugandan artist, and two art therapists from the United States. The artist facilitated weekly artmaking sessions for former unhoused youth being served by the organization, as well as engaged in weekly virtual…

The integration of somatic approaches in art therapy can counter the trauma of microaggressions. By adopting a power-from-within stance, art therapists can facilitate sessions for clients to affirm their LGBTQIA+ identities while resisting the impact of discrimination. This article, co-written by an art therapist and client, provides lived…

This paper discusses the potential of participant art-making as an ethnographic analytic method for materialising otherwise invisible experiences in the everyday lives of people. To describe this methodology, I share examples from a two year project conducted in a photography classroom in the northeastern United States. Teenage participants made…

This article describes findings from two surveys to determine how the modes of learning, processes of making, and aesthetic products made by youth in extracurricular contexts compared or contrasted with learning and making in school-based art education programs. Survey respondents included over 400 adolescents and young adults (ages 14-21) who…

The Artist in Residence at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland offers an arts program that is deeply engaged with the field of disability studies. By moving beyond an exclusively medicalized model of disability, hospitalized children and adolescents are situated as experts on their own lived experience. Artists, art therapists, and pediatric…

During the summer of 2016, through a teen arts internship, the author conducted research on some of the contexts, narratives, and activities that shape artist identity formation. The teen arts interns spent mornings engaged in activities such as discussion, writing, and making art, with a focus on art as activism, and spent afternoons as teaching…

"Autobiography on the Spectrum" challenges prevailing notions about autism by offering a critically unconventional perspective--the viewpoint of adolescents who are themselves on the spectrum. Examining a year-long inquiry, Myers highlights the autobiographical works of the students through writing, photography, poetry, art, and more.…

As in the case of the 80th anniversary of Picasso's "Guernica," painted in 1937, museums can incorporate significant dates and anniversaries into their educational programming. The University of Navarra Museum has taken advantage of the opportunity presented by this anniversary to present an educational project entitled…

Addressing students' mental health needs has become a growing concern amongst educators and school leaders, as 25% of adolescents are known to be diagnosed with a mental health disorder. Moreover, students in urban contexts are more likely to experience mental health challenges as they face environmental stressors in their communities that stem…

Artbooks, which are a combined form of picture and story book created using mixed media, can be a simple yet powerful way of supporting children affected by war and displacement to tell their stories. They allow children to work through the creative arts, which protects them from being overwhelmed by difficult memories. They also allow, even very…

In this article Matthew Etherington shares his experiences, successes, and challenges in implementing a 7th-grade fashion design unit in which he attempts to realize his curricular vision through critical visual culture pedagogy and role-playing. During the 4-week lesson period, Etherington's instructional checkpoints were broken into three main…

Rangeley Friends of the Arts (RFA) is a nonprofit arts organization in Rangeley, a town of 1,200 souls in the rural western mountains of Maine. Working with existing facilities and a largely volunteer workforce, the article explains how this group established Creative After School Arts, or CASA--a program that provides a safe home away from home…

Creative youth development (CYD) is a dynamic area of community arts education that successfully bridges youth development and arts education. CYD is an intentional, holistic practice that combines hands-on artmaking and skill building in the arts with development of life skills to support young people in successfully participating in adolescence…

While the observations of generalist educators (Irving, 2009; Scheld, 2012) and anecdotal studies have suggested that interests in popular stories can "turn non-reading pupils into readers" (Smith, 2005) and increase critical writing skills (Kell, 2009; Thomas 2006), many art teachers fail to recognize the educational merits of fanart,…

In this report of innovative teacher practice, the author describes an arts-based event which brought together adolescent refugee and immigrant students and pre-service teachers to deliberate about immigration policies and attitudes in the United States.